Boston Flora

Wednesday, September 28, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm – Hydrangeas 101, Online

One of the most popular and beloved garden plants is the Hydrangea. The great shape, large and abundant flowers, attractive foliage and options for many growing situations make it a great landscaping plant. Yet, as changing climate conditions persist, this plant can puzzle even the most experienced gardener. Landscape designers are often asked many questions about this curious plant. Why has my Hydrangea stopped blooming? What made the blossom color change? Should the plant be pruned? My plant is drooping badly, did I kill it? This New England Botanic Garden webinar on September 28 at 6:30 pm will tackle those questions and many more as we get to know the different types of Hydrangeas and explore tips and care to help your plants become outstanding performers.

Cheryl Salatino is the principal designer and owner of Dancing Shadows Garden Design, a residential landscape design and services firm. She has been designing gardens across Massachusetts since 2002. Cheryl is a Certified Landscape Designer and a Massachusetts Certified Horticulturist (MCH). She received her certificate in landscape design from the Radcliffe Seminars Landscape Design Program of Harvard University. She was awarded the status of Massachusetts Certified Horticulturist by the Massachusetts Nursery & Landscape Association (MNLA) as evidence of achieving the industry’s highest standards in nursery and landscape professionalism. Cheryl has also earned an Advanced Certificate in Horticulture and Design as part of the New England Wildflower Society’s Native Plant Studies Program. $10 Member Adult; $15 Adult Register at www.nebg.org

Monday, September 12, 1:00 pm – St. James Park – Plants, Pelicans and Pageants, Online

An insight into the history, landscape and iconic events within the ceremonial setting of St James’s Park. The online lecture takes place on Zoom and a recording link will be sent to registrants to watch for one week following the talk. £5.00 This London Parks & Gardens event may be paid for HERE.

St James’s Park is one of Europe’s busiest parks attracting some 17 million visitors per year. The Park is bordered by the Mall and Horse Guards Parade, both scenes of annual ceremonial events such as State Visits, State Opening of Parliament, and the Queen’s Birthday Parade. It regularly hosts a wide range of participation events such as the finish of the London Marathon and became the venue for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games for several sporting events including hosting Beach Volleyball on Horse Guards Parade. Half a million people are estimated to have visited St James’s Park on the day of the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton in 2011, that number surpassed for The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations in 2012 and the Platinum Jubilee weekend in 2022. The Park is known for its displays of spring bulbs, the floriferous borders and landscape styled by John Nash, and intricate summer bedding schemes. The lake is home to many species of waterfowl and has been a home to pelicans since 1664.

Mark Wasilewski is Manager of St James’s Park and The Green Park. He is a Trustee of London in Bloom and judges for several organisations including the London Gardens Society and Guild of Horticultural Judges and is also an RHS Accredited Floral Judge. He served on the RHS Britain in Bloom national judging panel between 2004 and 2016 and on the RHS Herbaceous Plant Committee 2015-20.

Mark was made a Member of The Royal Victorian Order in 2013 for his services to The Royal Parks.

Thursday, September 15 – The Challenges of the Victorian Working-class Garden, Online

The Gardens Trust’s third set of lectures on the C19th garden takes us towards its heyday. As Britain’s empire expanded plant hunters scoured the world to bring home plants to fill the gardens and greenhouses not just of the rich but an ever-growing middle class. Gardening became a hobby, and indeed a passion for many in the working class too. As a result, gardening books and magazines flourished, and horticulture became big business. Garden design, like architecture became more and more eclectic. Labor was cheap so extravagance and display became commonplace in the private realm while public parks, often on a grand scale, were created all over the country, but especially in urban areas. Inevitably however there was a reaction against such artifice and excess, with a call for the return to more natural styles, and by the end of the century the cottage garden was vying with the lush herbaceous border to be the defining feature of the late Victorian garden. On Thursday, September 15 at 5 am Eastern time (a recording link will be sent, good for seven days, to watch at your leisure), Margaret Willes will start things off with The Challenges of the Victorian Working-class Garden.

Margaret Willes spent her career in book publishing, latterly as the Publisher at the National Trust. On retirement, she took up writing on various aspects of cultural history. Her gardening books include The Making of the English Gardener: Plants, Books and Inspiration, 1560-1660 (Yale University Press, 2011), A Shakespearean Botanical (Bodleian Publishing, 2015), and The Gardens of the British Working Class (Yale University Press, 2014). She cultivates her own garden in Hackney.

Her title is deliberately double edged. Gardening was indeed often a challenge to working-class men and women, who lacked spare time, money and access to sources of information, often denied them through lack of literacy. When asked to write a history of British working-class gardens, Ms. Willes also faced a challenge, though finding out about the 19th century was easier than for earlier times. She shall consider the sources that she found both useful and illuminating, from recreations of historic gardens to literature, photographs and oral history. She shall look at a wide range of what might be considered gardens, across Britain and Ireland, town and country, including shared spaces such as allotments. £5 each or all 6 for £30. To see the full schedule, and to register through Eventbrite, visit HERE

Sunday, September 18, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm – English Garden Eccentrics with Todd Longstaffe-Gowen, Live and Online

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, the renowned landscape architect and historian, shares anecdotes from his new book English Garden Eccentrics: Three Hundred Years of Extraordinary Groves, Burrowings, Mountains and Menageries (Mellon/Yale, 2022). Longstaffe-Gowan introduces a cast of obscure and eccentric English garden-makers who created intensely personal and idiosyncratic gardens between the early seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. With tales of miniature mountains, intriguingly shaped topiaries, exotic animals, excavated caves, and assembled architectural fragments, Longstaffe-Gowan highlights the follies and foibles of that personified these gardens and their makers.

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan is an internationally acclaimed landscape architect with a practice based in London. He is gardens adviser to Historic Royal Palaces, lecturer at New York University (London), president of the London Gardens Trust, editor of The London Gardener, and author of several other books including The London Town Garden (Yale, 2001) and The London Square (Yale, 2012). He has developed and implemented long-term landscape management plans for the National Trust (Swindon, United Kingdom), English Heritage (Swindon, United Kingdom), and a wide range of private owners in the United Kingdom and around the world. Longstaffe-Gowan has had extensive input in the conservation and redevelopment of a variety of historic landscapes in London, including the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace Gardens, and the Crown Estate.

Free. Advance registration for the Zoom transmission is required. The program is sponsored by The Clark in Williamstown, and you may register at www.clarkart.edu

Tuesdays, September 10, September 27, and October 4, 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm – Cultivating Your Plant Communities, Online

Your backyard has a unique plant community based on the ecology and geology of the area.

In this three-part Native Plant Trust workshop to be held online, learn to identify appropriate native plants and groupings for your site and create a personalized plant palette and design that is beautiful and enhances biodiversity. Leave the workshop inspired to integrate science and art in your garden. Tickets: $135 Members – $162 Non-Members. Sessions will be held from 6-9 on September 10, 27m and October 4. Staci Jasin, Landscape Designer, will instruct.

All ticketing done through Native Plant Trust.

Saturday, September 17, 10:00 am – 11:30 am – The History and Development of Hollister House Garden

On September 17 at 10 am, join George Schoellkopf as he tells the story of how he started the garden at Hollister House over forty years ago and how he has shaped its growth through the intervening years. Old photographs show the garden at every stage of its development, as new sections were added and the original garden was improved and reimagined. George will illustrate how conditions in the garden have changed over the years, and how newly available hybrids and plant species offered the opportunity to create exciting new horticultural scenarios.

George Schoellkopf was born in 1942 in Dallas, Texas, where he battled as a child against the harsh Texas climate to make his first garden. He was educated in Connecticut at The Hotchkiss School and at Yale University. He also holds a master’s degree in Art History from Columbia University in New York City, where for many years he ran a gallery specializing in 18th and 19th century American antiques and folk art and was thus only able to garden on weekends. He now divides his time between Hollister House and Santa Barbara, CA. George has written articles on gardening in Town & Country, House & Garden, House Beautiful, Fine Gardening and Rosemary Verey’s The American Man’s Garden. George is a member of the Board of Directors of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and Lotusland in Santa Barbara California and an honorary member of the Washington, CT Garden Club.

Advance reservation is suggested. Hollister House will follow all state and local guidelines for Covid-19 at our events.

HHG members $25 Non-members $35 Register HERE.

Monday, September 19, 2:00 pm – The Broderer’s Crown, Online

A 6-part Gardens Trust online lecture series, exploring how flowers and gardens have inspired textile artists, begins Mondays at 18:00 BST, equivalent to 2 pm Eastern time. Here in their latest series of talks they are taking a sideways view by exploring how gardens and flowers have influenced and inspired other arts and crafts. This first series of 6 will focus on textiles and explore some of the historical and technical aspects of embroidering, weaving and printing using floral designs on fabric. You will look at textiles from Elizabethan crowns to Edwardian table linen to see how flowers provided inspiration, taking in the prolific art embroiderers of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Then you will be brought bang up to date with two contemporary embroiderers with very different approaches to floral imagery who will share their design processes with us.

The first talk on September 19 is The Broderer’s Crown, with Cynthia Jackson. Following the reformation, embroiderers in the Tudor era increasingly embraced the use of floral imagery to decorate a myriad of objects from ceremonial items to furnishings and fashionable garments. Luxury fabrics such as silk velvet and cloth woven with silver tinsel were embellished with botanical imagery gleaned from popular illustrated herbals. La Clef des Champs provided patterns inspired by Jacques Le Moyne’s exquisite watercolour representations of life in a Tudor garden. Skilled hands created beautiful embroideries using polychrome silks and gold and silver threads in a variety of techniques.

Three exceptional extant Tudor embroideries illustrate the remarkable creativity of the Tudor embroiderer. The textile known as the Bacton Altar Cloth is like a garden, a sampling of a wide range of colourful, botanical sprigs arranged in rows, alive with insects flitting through the blooms. In the early tradition of the popular miniature, a small and exquisitely embroidered portrait of a fashionable Tudor lady is featured in front of a formal garden, complete with topiary and fountain. The Broderer’s Crown is a ceremonial artifact used to inaugurate a newly elected official of the 16th century Livery Company. It is unique in its decoration of applied silk and metal flowers on a circlet of silk velvet. The overall design is a simple repeat but as the individual layers of flowers and fruit are explored, the embroidery on the Crown reveals an astonishing complexity.

This ticket (click HERE) is for this individual session and costs £5, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 6 sessions at a cost of £24 via the link here.

Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

Cynthia Jackson is a freelance embroiderer, designer and tutor. An award-winning textile artist, she finds inspiration in the remarkable potential of embroidery, experimenting with the unusual while preserving a commitment to technique. Cynthia’s focus, as an independent academic researcher, is on professional Tudor embroiderers and the impact of their craft on the material culture of early modern England. Her published articles combine documentary analysis with careful practical investigation of 16th century artifacts. She is a two-time recipient of the Society of Antiquaries of London’s Janet Arnold Award. Her current goal is to seek out, examine and re-create extant examples of 16th English embroidery, culminating in the publication of an illustrated history of Tudor embroidery and a practical guide to techniques and materials.

The Broderer’s Crown © The Worshipful Company of Broderers

Sunday, September 18, 10:30 am – 12:30 pm – Great Marsh

Salt marshes exist at the boundary of land and sea. The plants that inhabit the marsh must be able to tolerate being periodically inundated with salt water, which is fatal to most other plants. Marsh plants, which have adapted to these stressful conditions, are incredibly productive and unique. Join us in this exploration of the largest salt marsh in New England. This September 18 Native Plant Trust easy, muddy hike in Rowley, Massachusetts will feature salt marsh plants such as Spartina, Triglochin, Pluchea, Suaeda, and Salicornia. The tour will begin at 10:30 am with Robert Buchsbaum, and is $30 for NPT members, $36 for nonmembers. Need we say, dress appropriately. Register at http://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/great-marsh/

Monday, September 12, 6:00 pm – 6:45 pm – Plant-Based Eating Across the African Diaspora, Online

Are you curious about vegetarian, vegan and plant-based diets and how these fit into a variety of cultural dishes? Join the Boston Public Library and Stop & Shop Grove Hall registered dietitian Christine in celebration of cultural plant-based foods and their contribution to health and wellness. Regardless of whether you joined Christine for the 2-part series earlier this year or are joining for the first time, you’ll learn some new ideas for preparing delicious plant-based meals that are good for your health and good for your soul!

Note: This is a 4-part webinar series. Participants have the option to sign-up for all or individual sessions. Choose to your liking!

Part 1: Flavor & Spice
Part 2: A Trip To West Africa
Part 3: Four Ways To Play With Tropical Fruit
Part 4: Snacks And Desserts

This program is presented in partnership by the Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library and Stop & Shop Nutrition Partners. Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cooking-series-plant-based-eating-across-the-african-diaspora-tickets-338431607047.

Saturday, September 17, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Planting and Stewarding Native Meadows: An Intensive One-Day Workshop with Larry Weaner

Demand for native meadows, particularly as an alternative to lawn, is increasing dramatically. That said, few planting types are more misunderstood. Many failures result from inadequate planning and management; as well as the use of plants that are poorly adapted to the site and unable to survive in a highly competitive meadow environment. Far better results can be obtained when the plants and processes used reflect the ecological character of our native meadow communities. More than one-year wonders, meadows modeled on these ecosystems can provide long-term, easily managed landscapes that harbor a myriad of wildlife and provide color and texture throughout the year. The September 17 Berkshire Botanical Garden program will begin with Landscape Designer Larry Weaner discussing the design, implementation, and management of native meadows on a variety of scales and in residential and public settings. The remainder of the day will include viewing on-property meadows including a meadow-in-progress and an area with high potential for a future meadow planting.

Session 1 | Ecological Principles in Meadow Design

While meadows are in high demand, effective protocols for designing and implementing them are in short supply. This session will delve into the nitty gritty of meadow design: site analysis, species selection, seed mix formulation, live plant inclusion, planting and management. The inclusion of shrub thickets and drifts will also be covered, including the arrangement of clonal vs. clump forming species, and the use of shrublands as ecological and visual “connective tissue” between meadow and woods.

Session 2 | Field Visit: Observation & Exploration

Through an exploration of the Berkshire Botanical Garden landscape, this session will examine how the principles presented in the introductory presentation play out in various types of meadows.

Session 3 | Meadows on the Garden Scale

Meadow-like plantings need not be consigned exclusively to large open spaces like

Pastures, abandoned fields, and mowed turf areas. In this session, Larry will illustrate how the meadow establishment techniques described in the earlier sessions can be altered to create refined meadow gardens on the small scale. Alterations to plant selection and arrangement, planting procedures and management techniques will be covered.

Larry Weaner, FAPLD, founded Larry Weaner Landscape Associates in 1982 and established its educational affiliate New Directions in the American Landscape in 1990. He is nationally recognized for combining expertise in horticulture, landscape design, and ecological restoration. His design and restoration work spans more than twenty U.S. states and the U.K. and has been profiled in numerous national publications. His book Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change received an American Horticultural Society (AHS) Book Award. In 2021 he received the AHS Landscape Design Award and the APLD Award of Distinction. He is also an Honorary Director (2021-2025) of Wild Ones – Native Plants, Natural Landscapes.

$165 for BBG members, $185 for nonmembers. Register HERE.